Recent advances in digital media technology has led to a rapid increase in the number of ways which digital media content such as images, text, audio items, and videos can be consumed. In the past, consumers were constrained to enjoying digital media content on their desktop computer or in their home. Today, digital media can be enjoyed at any time and in any place by using a variety of portable media devices.
Consumers generally own more than one media device and thus have many options for consuming digital media content, such as from a digital video recorder, desktop PC, laptop PC, tablet PC, or a smart phone. However, having multiple options does present some challenges. One difficulty is that each device can have a different user interface. Therefore, user interaction with a media item across multiple devices can be tedious and difficult. Another difficulty is that when a user migrates from one device to another, it can be difficult and inconvenient to resume playback on the new device.
For example, a viewer can be enjoying a media item on a large television in the home. The viewer can desire to migrate the playback of the media item to a portable handheld device due to a change in circumstances that results in the viewer needing to leave the home. To migrate the media item to the portable handheld device can be a tedious process that includes copying the media item over to the portable handheld device, starting up a media player application on the portable handheld device, locating the media item from storage of the portable handheld device, and searching through the media item to locate the point in which playback of the media item was interrupted on the large television. Hence, a significant amount of care and effort is required to migrate playback of media content from one device to another. Thus, there is a need for improved techniques for playing back media content across multiple devices.